


"They all rang incredibly false"

by qb_cereal



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, MAG048 Lost in the Crowd, MAG159 The Last, The Lonely - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23553736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qb_cereal/pseuds/qb_cereal
Summary: After refusing to kill Elias, Martin is made aware of a different, lesser-known aspect of The Lonely.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 7
Kudos: 121





	"They all rang incredibly false"

He hears Jon calling for him through the mist, with a worried, shaky voice. The Loneliness separates them, and that’s just the way things are here.

‘Martin? Martin, please. I can’t see you!’

With a distant curiosity, Martin takes a few steps toward the voice and a silhouette in the fog slowly resolves itself into Jon’s shape.

‘You’re okay! Good, that’s good. You scared me, Martin… I-I missed you.’

Jon gathers Martin into his arms and twists his fingers into the fabric of Martin’s jacket for better purchase. It’s faintly warmer than the damp air around them.

‘Martin? Are you okay?’

‘I’m okay,’ Martin says agreeably, though his heart feels light and somehow inexorably drawn toward Jon. He _wants_ this, wants every second so much it aches in his bones.

‘Come with me,’ Jon says, his voice a low rumble meant only for Martin’s ears. ‘Come home. I won’t leave you again.’

Martin reaches up to return the embrace, to feel Jon’s narrow shoulder blades through his shirt, just for a moment.

‘No,’ he says evenly.

Martin turns and pulls away and starts walking in the opposite direction.

‘Please! Martin, please, I… I love you! Come back!’

Martin doesn’t know what is calling after him, but he is absolutely certain it isn’t Jon Sims.

—

It could be that Peter is angry with him, he thinks. Or it could be some form of the Stranger. Either way, the momentary illusion of Jon was successful in making him feel more alone than ever. Martin walks faster, though he doubts that it actually moves him any further away from the thing. Distance is as unpredictable as time here.

There’s another voice, after what feels like hours. It’s even gentler than the last, sweet and melodic. Martin would laugh, if he didn’t think it would turn into a hysterical, gasping sound.

‘Martin?’

He keeps walking, but the voice gradually closes in on him anyway.

‘Martin? Martin, there you are, thank goodness! Oh, I thought I’d lost you!’

This time, the figure drops a tape recorder onto the sandy soil and uses both hands to pull Martin into a kiss. He doesn’t try to fight it; if Peter is going to send him these… these apparitions, then Martin is going to steal what scraps of closeness he can.

The kiss is warm and firm and sure, and the lie in front of him smells like tea and old books. Martin doesn’t close his eyes, so he sees the bright, beaming smile that forms when the apparition finally draws back.

‘You scared me,’ it says, running a hand through Martin’s hair. ‘I could have lost you. Are you… are you ready to come back with me?’

‘No,’ Martin says, his voice still flat and steady. ‘Goodbye.’

He removes himself from the apparition’s embrace and starts to walk away, desperately hoping he won’t see another one of those things. And desperately hoping he will.

—

They look _just_ like Jon, that’s the worst of it, Martin thinks. His dark skin, his greying hair, his bright and curious eyes, and every single scar. He starts to wonder how far Peter would let him get, if he held onto one of the Not Jons and let it pretend to lead him out.

The third one, or at least he thinks it’s the third, sounds angry long before it becomes visible. It yells his name, almost a roar, with venom and contempt that might have been familiar a hundred years ago.

The Not Jon grabs him by the forearm as soon as it appears, its face twisted in a snarl.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ it demands, and still Martin’s heart aches for it. ‘I have better things to do, you know.’

Its scarred palm is cool against Martin’s skin, its slender fingers not quite long enough to meet its thumb where they grip. Martin puts his free hand over them for a moment, and the thing rolls its eyes.

‘Martin! We can’t stay here,’ it says in exasperation, yanking on his arm. ‘Come _on!_ ’

‘No,’ Martin says again, and twists his arm free of the thing’s grasp.

He hears it calling after him as he walks away, furious and full of invective. The insults aren’t accurate, of course, but after a minute they make him smile.

—

It seems to happen more quickly after that, the strangers wearing Jon’s face emerging from the fog every few minutes. Some embrace Martin, some shout at him, a few do both. One is crying. One is frightened and clings to Martin’s arm. One is dryly patronising with no hint of fondness or friendship—that one is so wrong Martin almost laughs again. His chest feels tight and somehow desperate for every single one of them, but that isn’t so bad. Martin has brains enough to ignore his emotions when he needs to.

He knows something is different when the next one calls out to him, hoarse and miserable and utterly hopeless. The voice isn’t expecting a reply, and that scares Martin into thinking _what if_?

He can’t see the apparition until he’s almost on top of it, Jon’s body crumpled on its side and the ground around it soaked with blood. Martin sees the look of relief on its face and drops to his knees, suddenly perfectly calm and focused.

There’s a deep puncture wound in Jon’s side which is still bleeding sluggishly, and half a dozen shallower cuts on his arms. Martin tears strips of fabric from Jon’s already-shredded shirtsleeves to try and bandage the injuries.

‘Martin,’ he breathes, managing a smile despite his pained expression.

‘What happened?’ Martin says bluntly, and Jon looks away.

‘Daisy,’ he says at last. ‘She was trying… trying to save us, but…’

‘Oh,’ Martin says, and blinks, and reason comes flooding back. ‘ _Oh,_ you’re not—‘

‘I am,’ the Not Jon insists, breathing hard. ‘I’m Jon, I’m _your_ Jon. Please.’

‘You aren’t,’ Martin says firmly, but he turns his attention downward to keep bandaging the thing’s arms. ‘You aren’t even close.’

‘Why… would you say that?’ it presses, sounding weaker.

‘That, for one,’ Martin sighs, shaking his head and double-knotting the fabric. ‘Two, these defensive wounds. Three, I’m not going to just… just _tell_ you what it would take to fool me. But I’m sure you can keep trying.’

‘Then why?’

It waves one slender hand toward the makeshift bandages in question.

‘I don’t know who or what you are,’ Martin says with a tight, thin-lipped smile. ‘But I know what I am.’

The Not Jon looks up to the fog-covered sky and Martin follows its gaze, trying to see what it sees. When he looks back down, it is gone and so is the blood staining the ground. He sighs tiredly and stays where he is a while longer, rubbing away tears he didn’t notice gathering in his eyes.

—

One of them bites back a cry and stumbles away at the sight of Martin, and it _hurts_ but Martin lets it go. One shirtfronts him and tries to drag him along. Two are blinded, one bandaged and one still bleeding openly from its sockets. One presses a kiss to his hand and says his name with desperate relief. Martin starts running, trying to get past them, trying to get away to where these awful, twisted things don’t call his name in a too-familiar voice. More try to pull him into hugs and stroke his hair and straighten his collar and Martin is so tired. He loves every single one of the broken things, can’t help but love them, feels his heart ache for every face and every voice and every touch.

He wishes he was alone again. Maybe that was Peter’s goal. Or Elias’. Or whoever was calling the shots out there.

The silence reigns, broken only by the distant crashing waves, for a long time and Martin is sure this is how he was supposed to react. His skin still tingles in every place they touched him and he misses them. Misses the real Jon more. Misses the numb distance of the Lonely.

_Are you sure none of them were real?_ his mind supplies helpfully, and a new creeping horror slides down the length of Martin’s spine. But he had been sure, had felt so _confident…_

—

His cheeks are dry again by the time he hears another voice, and all he feels is exhaustion.

‘Martin!’

‘Jon?’

‘I’m here. I came for you.’

This one is even more wrong, somehow. It looks weary, with dark circles under its eyes and its hair falling loose from its bun. It almost hurts to look at it, because there is no aching tug of longing in Martin’s chest. The only thing he feels is a distant pang of fear, muffled by the fog and the quiet.

‘Why?’

There is a pause and Martin’s heartbeat remains perfectly steady. The Not Jon wrings its hands and its eyes dart up and down Martin’s form as though checking he is real. It’s almost laughable.

‘I thought you might be lost.’

‘Are you real?’

He knows what the answer will be, but he also knows the truth.

‘Yes! Yes, I am. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.’

‘No,’ Martin says, sure of that much. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Why?’ The Not Jon sounds surprised and hurt, and the tone cuts deep into some place Martin cannot name. He realises he has given these apparitions altogether too much information already.

There is no compulsion in the question, not from this creature, so Martin mumbles something vague about belonging to the Lonely. The Not Jon argues, but at least this one doesn’t try to put a hand on him.

‘I really loved you, y’know?’

He throws it out like it’s unimportant, like he doesn’t care if he fades to nothing here, like he doesn’t care if he never feels that bone-deep tug of human connection again, and he walks away.

—

Martin counts his steps to avoid having to think, to avoid the dozens of questions in his head he can’t answer. He makes it past four hundred before he is interrupted by something saying his name in a hoarse whisper, as though frightened to be heard. He knows what it is, of course. Knows that voice down to his bones, knows the answering pull of love in his own chest, as easy as breathing.

As easy as…

Martin stops short, closing his eyes and and clapping his hands over his ears, blocking out the Lonely around him. He thinks of Jon, the _real_ Jon from years ago in the archives. The way he tucked pens in his hair and then forgot about them. The way his eyes lit up when he was recording statements. The way he’d squint when trying to read his own handwriting on a post-it note. The way his hands had grazed Martin’s when they passed papers back and forth for filing.

There’s nothing. No warmth, no longing, no _need_ , and no tell-tale tug of messy, unrequited love between his ribs.

Martin opens his eyes a fraction of a second before a hand squeezes his arm and a sharp tug makes his chest ache. The Not Jon looks panicked and vulnerable, perspiration sticking its hair to its forehead, but Martin pushes it away without hesitation.

After all, he has brains enough to ignore his emotions when he needs to. And loving Jon has never once been easy.

He turns and tries to walk back the way he came, toward the Jon that didn’t make him feel anything unusual, but the fog is thicker than ever and disorienting. Martin puts his head down, shoves his hands deep in his pockets and starts counting his steps again.

Time seems to speed up without him, leaving him dragging his feet through molasses and struggling to keep count, but that only bolsters his stubbornness. His name is called urgently, then desperately, then in pure terror, but every time it makes his heart slam arrhythmically against his ribs so he doesn’t look up.

When he reaches four hundred, there is a sound like a distant clap of thunder, reverberating through the ground.

‘Martin? He’s gone, Martin.’

Nothing. Martin rubs his hand over his chest, just in case.

‘Listen to me, Martin,’ the figure in front of him is saying, and Martin is _scared_.

‘Hello, Jon.’

They argue, but the argument is as distant and foggy as the ocean. Martin wants to give this person every chance to prove themselves, but he isn’t even sure what kind of proof he’s hoping for.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and finds himself meaning it. They are both trapped here, and soon they will be separated by the very nature of the place, and Martin will regret staying or leaving or speaking or being silent.

‘Tell me what you see.’

Martin’s heart does not skip a beat, but the warm, buzzing pressure of the compulsion envelopes him, covering every inch of skin and all he can do is answer.

It’s _real_. It has to be real. He stumbles forward and pulls Jon into his arms and the tears surface again. Jon slowly presses both shaky hands to Martin’s back with a hesitant affection none of the apparitions had even come close to recreating.

‘Let’s go home,’ he offers, and Martin tucks his face into Jon’s shoulder to hide a sob, narrowly avoiding the ballpoint pen tucked through Jon’s ponytail.

‘How?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Jon says, as certain as a promise. ‘I know the way.’

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Source](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23390986) by [birderlands](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birderlands/pseuds/birderlands)




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